Re: Business orgs and Re: Decentralization

[staffan@medialab.ericsson.se (Staffan Liljegren) (by way ofvanessa@media.mit.edu (Vanessa Stevens Colella))]

I would never fly an aircraft with totally decentralised control
The issue was the aircraft with decentralised control as an
"eye-catcher" that might lead management to get a more intuitive feeling
and "proof" that decentralised organisations can work towards commonly
defined goals. (Sorry I don't have the video tape , You'd have to ask
Professor Malone at Sloan-MIT).

-Staffan

| From MIKLOS@ttt-atm.ttt.bme.hu Wed Sep 17 11:03 MET 1997
|
| Hej,
|
| > I would like to extend this discussion to business organisations
| > as well. I saw an MIT demo (presented by Professor Tom Malone, Sloane)
| > of an audience - that acted as decentralised pilotes - guiding a virtual
| > airplane through a target landscape . Each person in the audience could
| > guide either up-down or left-right and this was then fed into navigation
| > of the virtual airplane. The emergent behaviour - of course - was that the
| > virtual aircraft was safely guided through most of the  landscape. I liked
| > this analogy and it worked well as a popular demo of decentralised control.
|
| I do not know too much about business organization structures, but the
| airplane analogy makes me ask a question.
| (Can we read about it somewhere?)
|
| To me, it is not at all obvious that the emergent behaviour of the virtual
| aircraft is safe. What happens if there is a mountain which must be
| avoided either from the right or from the left? Isn't it too slow to wait
| for the audience to decide on a solution through some kind of positive
| feedback?
|
| And similarly in a business organization, there could often be situations
| where there are many good solutions, but the org must decide firmly on one
| of them and drop the others. Doesn't a decentralized strategy perform worse
| in this case because it is more close to trying to find a common
| denominator?
|
| Gyorgy
|
|